


Hockey This Way (We Miss You)

by Anonymous



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: College!AU, Hockey is gay, Hockey!AU, M/M, Mutual Pining, You Can Play, slow-burn, star-crossed hockey bois
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-10-26 12:13:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 17,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17745722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: At the start of his senior year, Victor Nikiforov finds himself the captain of the failing Avon University hockey team. Everyone looks to Victor to carry on Avon's prestigious reputation in the game, but he struggles to unite the older players with the expansive new group of freshmen, the future of the team, who all seem at times completely incapable of working together.Yuri Katsuki was a little fish in a big pond on his junior team, and he's still not certain what he did to catch the attention of collegiate recruiters and land a athletic scholarship and a spot on the Avon University hockey team. One thing he knows for certain though: he's not going to let anybody down, not again. He's determined to make this season of hockey, and his first year of college, better than anyone could have hoped for, even if the odds are seemingly stacked against him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is just something that I've been playing with for a while, and I wanted to write it as a warm-up every day. I don't know where this is going; I just wanted to do something fun :)
> 
> Ratings may change as I keep going. I'll put in a warning if I think that's going to happen.

“Yooooo hooooo! Victor!”

Victor leaned out the open window and looked down to the scraggly yard, the quiet stretch of street. Melrose wasn’t a very exciting place in mid August, but soon enough, Victor knew, that would change. School would be starting up again. Soon enough, students would outnumber the townies. Parties would be bumping up and down the street from Thursday night to Sunday afternoon. And Chris, the blond boy laying on the horn of the little blue sedan in the driveway, was just a portent of their arrival. Victor waved at his friend, smiling.

“I’ll be down in a minute!” He called.

Chris flashed him a smile and turned off the car. Victor turned away from the window.

He had spent the summer in Melrose, working as an intern with the athletic department at his father’s direction. To be honest, he would have preferred to job shadow or help run the presses at the newspaper back home, but it had been made explicitly clear to him that even suggesting such an idea was foolish. Print is a dying medium, Victor, as his father always told him. He’d be much better off applying his skills to marketing, advertising.

Not that he really wanted a job that wasn’t playing hockey for the rest of his life, but, well...you win some you lose some.

The house was old, and full of tight corners. The lease had been passed down among a small group of the upperclassmen on the men’s hockey team for so long that Victor forgot sometimes that it didn’t actually belong to them. He’d been designated the attic bedroom last year, the only available room in a house full of seniors with first dibs, but he hadn’t minded. First of all, he liked all the slants off the roof, how cozy the tight room felt, and second of all, it seemed like every great captain of the Avon hockey team had had that room. Victor didn’t usually consider himself superstitious, but it seemed like only good luck could come from living upstairs.

Even if it was often sweltering hot up there in the summer, and freezing cold in the winter.

When he reached the ground floor, he threw open the side door and in a minute, he and Chris were wrapped in a tight hug.

Chris was one year Victor’s junior, and the team goalie. By some great twist of fate, the two of them had become fast friends over the last two years. Maybe it had been living next door to each other. Maybe it had been their reputation for being two of the only reliable underclassmen on a team dominated by seniors. Either way, though, Victor was glad to have Chris back in his company now, and even more excited to be living with him this year.

“So this is it, huh?” Chris asked, stepping back and looking up at the house. “I almost thought I’d never get here.”

Victor laughed. “Well, who else was I going to ask?”

Chris gave Victor a small, sad smile.

“Are all of us here this year?” he asked.

Victor nodded. Together, they started walking back towards the house.

“Five upperclassmen,” Chris mused, his tone almost disbelieving.

Victor hung his head. They’d had this conversation before. Several times, since his sophomore year when he had looked around and counted the number of players the team was taking on every year, considering how many left before they graduated. He and Chris had known this was coming, but it hadn’t seemed real until now. It still didn’t seem real, like if they would show up at practice tomorrow and Yakov would yell “surprise!” and instead of unveiling a new roster of freshmen, he would reintroduce everyone they had been playing with them past few years.

But Victor knew they were gone. He’d been to graduation last year, and seen each of his former teammates, his brothers, walk across the stage. They were gone. The legacy of the team rested on him, now. Well, him and the four other upperclassmen. But he was the Captain. It was his responsibility to lead the team through this new year.

“We are _so_ screwed,” Chris said.

Victor shrugged and pushed open the door. Chris kicked off his shoes into the back hall and followed Victor up the little staircase that led to the kitchen. They both fell easily into the little table pushed up against the wall.

“Valentino’s room taken yet?” Chris asked.

Victor shook his head.

“You’re the first one back,” he said.

“Well,” he amended, “Georgi’s truck appeared in the driveway two days ago, and I think he took the room down the stairs from mine, but I haven’t seen him, so…”

Chris snorted. “Bet he’s with Anya.”

“Probably,” Victor agreed. “John back yet?”

Chris smiled, his affection for his boyfriend clear. “He’s getting back tonight. Mind if he comes over?”

Victor shrugged. “I don’t mind. I miss people. I’ve been bored all summer.”

“Internship sucked that much, huh?”

“It was fine,” Victor said.

He picked at some of the loose laminate on the table. He was pretty sure it was at least as old as he was, purchased by a member of the team who had been long-gone by the time he’d come to Avon, but it had a sort of shabby-chic feel to it that Victor had always liked.

“Not what you wanted, though,” Chris said gently.

Victor shook his head.

Sometimes he forgot that he had only know Chris for a handful of years. They had spent so many night staying up talking to each other about life that it seemed sometimes like if there had never been a day Chris hadn’t been there for him, and he for Chris.

Victor wanted to play hockey for the rest of his life. Failing that, be a sports reporter of some sort, just so he could stay close enough to the game he loved so much.

It was Chris who was the marketing major, who was content to go into advertising or be some wheel of the bigger machine of the sports industry if an NHL team never scooped him up.

“Well,” Chris said, forcing cheer into his voice. “One more year, and then you’re done. You can do what you want, out from underneath your father’s thumb.”

“Woohoo,” Victor said softly, lifting his hands in a weak imitation of jazz hands.

Chris laughed, and that got Victor going too. Sunlight slipped in slantways through the windows on the kitchen wall. Somewhere, he had left a fan running, and he could hear it buzzing in some distant room of the house.

“Let’s throw a party tonight,” Chris said. “Get excited for a great year and whatnot.”

It wasn’t a bad idea, but something in Victor hesitated all the same.

“Is anyone even back yet?” He asked. “It’s pointless to throw a party if no one’s going to come…”

“Georgi, Mila, I’m sure, you, me, JJ and Nishigori will be here tonight to probably--”

Chris started, counting on his fingers.

Victor groaned at JJ’s name. Something about JJ had always rubbed Victor the wrong way. He had almost forgotten that, as one of the five upperclassmen remaining on the team, he had been forced to invite JJ to live here this year. Nishigori (first name Takeshi, not that anyone but his girlfriend ever used it), he could make for a fun housemate.

“And basically the whole hockey team,” Chris said, spreading his fingers. “We can text the sophomores, tell them to bring the freshmen. It can be our first team bonding experience of the year!”

Victor laughed. There was a twinkle in Chris’ eye. For a moment, he was able to forget everything that was weighing on him: his limited days here with Chris, taking it easy; the team he would officially meet tomorrow that was probably woefully unprepared for the year ahead; his father; everything. Tonight was going to be a night to remember. He would make it so. He would convince himself that it wasn’t doom, but anticipation he felt in the heavy August air if it killed him, and he was going to have a good time.

Why? Because he was Victor Nikiforov, and when he said he was going to do something, he made it happen.


	2. Chapter 2

Yuri stepped out of the car and took a deep breath. The building in front of him was going to be his new home. Neat red brick, proud columns stretching up for two stories to support a pseudo-balcony over the entrance. The door was closed. When Yuri had pictured moving into his dorm, he had always pictured an open door, with a smiling RA standing there with a smile, waiting to welcome him in. To be fair though, he _was_ moving in early. It was one of the requirements of being on the hockey team. Practice started before the school year began.

“Oh, it’s so exciting!” his mom squealed.

She snapped a photo of him, and Yuri flinched, laughing.

“Mom, I haven’t done anything yet. I just got out of the car.”

“I know,” she said, smiling broadly. “I wanted to catch your first reaction to everything.”

On the other side of their little compact rental, Yuri’s dad slammed his door shut and chuckled.

“That will be one of the scrapbook, Yuri, just wait and see.”

At that, Yuri smiled. His mom had been chronicling everything that had ever happened to their family, major and minor, in scrapbooks since before he had been born. They were all stacked neatly on shelves in their family’s tiny living room back home. On days when Yuri had nothing to do, he would run his hand across the spines and pull one out at random, look through all the old pictures of him and his sister Mari and the rest of the family, and the little notes his mother had included about what they’d been up to.

This--Avon University--it was all so different from California, and the motel his family ran for tourists making “Historic Route 66 Road Trips.” The only thing that was remotely similar was the heat, but even that wasn’t quite right. In California, the heat was dry. Here, the heat almost felt like a living thing. It stuck to his skin and weighed down on his shoulders. In the back of his mind, the question rose, as it had all summer, what the hell he’d been thinking in deciding to come here, but he pushed it away, as always.

Avon was a good school, and he’d been given a good bunch of scholarships, both for academics _and_ for hockey, even if he wasn’t quite sure how he’d snagged the later of those, given Avon’s reputation and his own. But he could get a good education here, without having to worry about debt. Sure it was different, but different could be good. He could learn from different. Grow. And that’s what college was supposed to be about, right?

Another car pulled up the curb ahead of them and people started getting out.

“I wonder if it’s one of your teammates,” Yuri’s mom said, leaning in close.

Something in Yuri’s stomach twisted. He thought of home, the familiar hockey rink, his friends, the teammates he had let down.

“Let’s get inside,” he said, turning away before his mom could embarrass him.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and searched back through his photos to the screen grab he had taken of his room assignment. Yuri Katsuki and Phichit Chulanot (evidently, his roommate). Stevens Hall (the imposing building in front of him). Room 219. Well, there was his destination.

Yuri set off towards the door, his legs weak. He had no idea how to get into the building; he just knew that he had too. But he also didn’t want to turn back, introduce himself to his maybe-teammate, and ask for help. They would see soon enough how generally incompetent he was at hockey. He didn’t want rumors spreading early at how bad he was at everything else too.

The door the hall was not unlocked, as he had hoped. It barely budged at all as he pulled on the handle. Panic rose in Yuri’s throat. He really couldn’t do this, could he? He’d been crazy, thinking he could make it on his own. He should have gone to school closer to home, somewhere with more of a safety net for when he inevitably failed, just like he always did.

“Stuck?” someone said behind him.

Yuri turned and saw that the boy from the other car had caught up with him. In his arms he carried a big rubbermaid container. Yuri gulped. He wasn’t sure what it was about the other boy exactly that was so unsettling. Maybe it was the almost violet eyes, not quite brown or blue as he shifted and the light hit them. Maybe it was just the vibe he radiated, somewhere between angry and intense. Either way, Yuri got the feeling that this was someone he didn't want to mess with. He took a step back, away from Scary Boy and the door.

“You have to use you ID, like this,” Scary boy said, tapping his ID card on the reader next to the door.

The light on the reader blinked once before turning green. The door unlocked with a click. Scary Boy bumped the handicap button with his hip and the door swung open. Before he went inside though, he took a minute to size up Yuri, eyes narrowed.

“You on the team?” he asked.

Yuri nodded weakly. “The hockey team, yes.”

Scary boy shifted the Rubbermaid to one hip and held out his hand.

“Michele Crispino. Forward. Sophomore sports management major.”

Yuri stared at the hand blankly for a second before he realize that Scary Boy--Michele--was expecting him to introduce himself. Yuri shook his hand, feeling even more limp than before.

“Yuri Katsuki,” he said. “I’m a freshman forward, I guess. And I’m majoring in accountancy.”

Michele nodded sharply, niceties out of the way.

“We’re always up on the second floor. I’ll show you the way.”

Michele marched inside. Yuri’s mom grabbed Yuri’s arm, giggling a little.

“You’re first friend!” she said. “I wish I’d had my camera out. It will look staged if I try and get you two to do it again.”

Yuri whimpered. Even if Michele was apparently his new teammate, he wasn’t sure that qualified the two of them as friends. He wasn’t sure he and Michele would ever be friends, period. He found the strength to follow Michele inside though, and up the stairs.

There was a little sitting room at the top, with maroon and gold furniture everywhere. There was a TV mounted to one wall (not playing anything), a ping-pong table in the corner, and a little kitchenette. Threadbare carpeting covered the floor.

“This way!” Michele called, already receding down one of the hallway of the common area. Yuri scurried to keep up with him, his parents trailing a little ways behind.

“What’s your room number?” Michele asked once Yuri had fell into step behind him.

“219.”

“You’re almost across the hall a little from me, then. I think we’ll take up the entire corridor this year, at least, which is nice. Non-hockey people can be a pain in the ass.”

“Oh,” Yuri said. He wasn’t sure what exactly Michele could mean by that, but he figured it was better to just agree than ask why.

Michele dropped his bin outside of a door marked 216. A smiling yellow minion danced on one side of the number, his name written on it in neat print. On the other side was a second minion, but the name on this one was “Emil.”

Michele dug into his pocket for his ID, presumably to open this door as well, when it flew open.

“MICKEY!” The boy on the other side screamed. “I thought I heard you out here.”

Michele ears turned crimson. Yuri gaped.

The new boy--presumably Emil--was Michele’s opposite in nearly every way. For all the intimidation that Michele seemed to radiate, Emil was open and friendly, like an overly-enthusiastic golden retriever. Everything about Michele was crisp, neatly and efficiently done. Emil’s shirt was a little wrinkled. His hair and goatee were unruly. It was impossible that these two could be roommates, or even friends, but it was clear from the way that Emil wrapped Michele in a tight hug now that they were. Yuri stood by awkwardly, trying to figure out if now would be a good time to scoot away.

Emil, though, quickly let go of Michele and wheeled on Yuri.

“And you must be one of the new guys! Welcome to the team!”

He wrapped Yuri in a tight hug, which Yuri endured. He heard his mother take another photograph, and he tried to imagine how she would caption this later.

“I’m Emil,” Emil said when he finally let go, “and it looks like you’ve met Mickey--”

Michele--Mickey--glowered, and pushed past Emil into their room. Emil though seemed to be used to this and just stepped out of Mickey’s way with ease. He leaned on the door frame as he talked to Yuri.

“What’s your name?” Emil asked. “Major? Position? Hometown? Favorite hobby?

“I’m, uh, Yuri,” Yuri stuttered. “I’m an accountancy major. I’m from California, sort of by Los Angeles, I guess. I think I’m playing forward this year.”

Emil nodded enthusiastically at all of this. Mickey reappeared and headed back down the hall without saying anything. More people, probably Mickey’s family, came towards them carrying more buckets.

“You’re definitely playing forward, if that’s what you were recruited for,” Emil corrected. “But what’s your favorite hobby?”

“Oh, um…”

Yuri’s brain scrambled. Why was it that the moment people asked questions like this, everything went blank? He liked hockey, but something told him that Emil wouldn’t count that as a hobby. Hockey was what they were here to play. It couldn’t be an obligation _and_ a hobby.

“Yuri likes playing video games,” his dad piped in. “Especially that one with the cartoon characters, and the fighting.”

Emil gave Yuri a mystified look.

“Super Smash Brothers,” Yuri clarified. Relief swept through him when Emil smiled.

“I’m really bad at video games,” Emil admitted. “But you could probably ask Mickey to play with you, or see if any of the other freshman would be interested.”

Unexpectedly, Yuri found himself smiling to Emil in return. He still couldn’t understand how anybody could be excited to see Mickey, but Emil he was warming up to.

“Do you need any help carrying stuff up?” Emil asked. “My parents work, so they dropped me off this weekend and I moved in early.”

“We shipped the stuff I bought from home,” Yuri said. “We still have to go out and get the rest of it, but...maybe later?”

Emil’s smile grew. “Absolutely!” He said. “And by then, maybe everyone else will be here too, so we can all help!”

“So, um, 219…” Yuri started.

Emil pointed to a door at the end of the hall, in the corner. “Right there. Lucky you, too; corner rooms are always the biggest.”

Yuri flashed Emil a thumbs-up.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Anytime!”

The minion with Yuri’s name on the door to room 219 was short, smiling, and had a little tuft of hair on its head. The minion next to it, with Phichit’s name, was tall and only had one eye. Out of the corner of his eye, Yuri saw his mom lift  her camera in anticipation. For a moment, Yuri considered knocking, just to see if Phichit had already moved in, like Emil had, but he didn’t want to look stupid if his roomate wasn’t actually here. Bracing himself, Yuri took out his wallet and pulled his ID card from behind his driver’s license, right where he’d slipped it at the end of orientation in June. He had to have checked a million times between now and then to make sure it was still there, and it felt weird to pull it out now.

With a deep breath, Yuri tapped his card on the reader to unlock the door and then pushed it open. Anticipation surged in him as he took in the room in front of him. This was going to be a great year. It had to be.


	3. Chapter 3

Victor stood in front of the beer section in the Vault--the closest of Melrose’s numerous liquor stores that catered to the university populace--and examined his options. Next to him, Chris leaned on the freezer doors and practiced his French on DuoLingo.

“Le petit chien est rouge,” Chris recited.

Victor was not certain why he was here. Well, he was. They were throwing a party tonight, and parties required alcohol. What gave him pause, in a bemused sort of way, was the reflection that the only two people at this party who would legally be allowed to drink were he and Georgi. Chris wouldn’t turn 21 until February. JJ’s birthday escaped Victor as often as he learned it, but he was pretty sure that also wasn’t going to be until late spring.

Maybe Nishigori could drink. Maybe. Probably not, though.

“Get the rhinegeist,” Chris directed. “It’s the only kind that everybody likes.”

“Am I just your supplier? Am I really this bad of an influence on you?”

“Victor, you’re the one who handed me my first beer at my first party here.”

“That can’t be right.”

“You did,” Chris said, smiling a little. He tucked his phone into his pocket. “Austin Spidster handed it to you, and then you took a sip said ‘yuck this is awful,’ _and then handed it to me_.”

Victor raked back through his memory for this, and came up blank.

“Are you sure?” He asked.

Chris was clearly doing his best not to laugh now. “Absolutely positive, because I also thought it was awful, but I drank it anyways because I didn’t know what else to do.”

Victor laughed. “Nowadays you would have just handed it back to me.”

“Nowadays you don’t get blackout drunk at parties,” Chris countered.

Victor smiled, heart warming at the realization how much and how little had changed.

“In my defense,” he said, “I actually had bad role models.”

Chris barked out a laugh. “Yeah, Spidster could drink with the best of them.”

“That man goes to eleven,” Victor said, referencing a long-running joke between he and Chris about their old captain.

“Man, he was crazy.”

“Great on the ice, though,” Chris said, his voice turning more somber.

“He knew exactly how to unite the team, at the end of the day,” Victor agreed.

“I miss winning games,” Chris said quietly.

“We haven’t even played any yet,” Victor said.

Chris glanced away, down the empty aisles. Looking for something that wasn’t there, something they might not ever find again.

“You know what I mean,” Chris said.

Brothers. That was what the hockey team was, or was meant to be, anyways. They were a family. They belonged together. And their family, or at least a huge chunk of it, was gone, scattered to the wind. These freshmen that Yakov was bringing in--at the end of the day, Victor knew that how well they played was secondary to how well they could bond together into something more than just another hockey team. Looking at everyone they had lost though, well. It was hard to imagine that these new guys could ever fill the hole that everyone that had come before had left behind.

For a moment, Victor almost resented Yakov for making him and Chris have to do this, have to start over from scratch all over again. To have to let new people into their hearts while still feeling the absence of so many, while they themselves were preparing to go.

But it wasn’t Yakov’s fault, Victor knew. Not really. This was just the way things were, the way they had always been. You only have four years to make a difference on the ice in college, and even that was small potatoes. College players weren’t supposed to love their teams as much as Chris and Victor and everyone else at Avon did. And maybe that made them stronger, but it also made everything that much harder, too.

“Rhinegeist?” Victor asked in a pitiful attempt to lighten the mood.

Chris gave him a look that told Victor that Chris knew exactly what he was up to, but the smile Chris paired with it also had a note of thanks.

“Any chance you’ll also buy vodka?”

Victor scowled, horrified. “With our luck, the freshmen will start doing shots. We need to teach them how to drink before we give them the hard stuff.”

“No jungle juice then?” Chris asked, pouting.

“ _Definitely_ not,” Victor scolded. “You used to get drunk off of one cup of that stuff.”

“Spidster made it _strong_ ,” Chris muttered. “It’s not my fault.”

“Year resolution: we don’t let any of the freshman get as drunk as we used to.”

“Good idea, don’t think it will last.”

Victor shrugged and pulled open the door. He grabbed a few six packs and stacked them on the floor, and then moved down to grab something else. Chris was probably right. It didn’t matter what the two of them resolved to do; someone would want to go harder than was strictly needed, and drag a few freshmen with him. But it was worth the effort, Victor thought. A team was supposed to look out for each other, and that was what he was going to do, if only so he could inspire the others to do the same.

He knew each of the guys who had stayed on this year well enough not only to know who would probably be the least and most trouble tonight, but also how they would probably act on the ice. He knew how to lead them, who to watch out for especially.

“For what it’s worth,” Chris said, “regardless of how this season goes, I think you’re going to be an incredible captain.”

“What makes you say that?” Victor asked.

He looked down at the small cache of alcohol he had assembled at his feet, mentally calculating how much he thought the upperclassmen would drink, how much this would all cost, and how much and from whom he should ask later to help him cover it all.

Chris shrugged. “You care about people,” he said. “It shows. And when people feel like you care about them, they listen.”

Victor sighed. “We have a lot of egos though. And hard personalities.

JJ. James, if he hadn’t had enough knocks in a night. Carson. Mickey.

“You’ll figure it out,” Chris said firmly. “You always do.”

Victor bit his lip, but nodded.

“You know you can’t be here when I buy all this, right?” Victor asked.

Chris laughed and waved a hand. “You really think they’re going to ask if I’m of age?”

“They always do,” Victor said grimly. “Gotta keep up appearances of curbing the drinking culture here, somehow.”

“Don’t they know you’re probably just going to give it to me later?”

Victor quirked an eye at his friend. “Do you want to have a party tonight or not?”

Chris pouted. “You’re no fun.”

“Take it up the authorities, not me,” Victor said, bending down to pick everything up. “I’ll meet you outside.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chris said.

Victor watched him turn and retreat down the aisle. Sunlight flashed briefly at the front of the store when he pushed open the door and then he was gone. As Victor hefted everything towards the cash register, he almost wished that he had asked Chris to stay for a moment longer, if only so he could have helped carry all this. But it was Victor’s burden to bear, not Chris’. He could either ask Chris to help and get in trouble, or figure out how to make it work on his own.

He got to the front eventually. A bored cashier rang him up and Victor paid. They squinted at his ID when he showed it to them.

“Nikiforov, huh?” They asked.

“Yeah,” Victor said.

“Like our hockey guy?”

“Yep.”

He braced himself to be peppered with questions. It had become almost the norm since his freshman year, when the student newspaper had declared him an “up-and-coming” player. When he had been the only one to score any goals against their rival, the top ranked team in the conference. The more he played, and got a reputation as a good player, the more people stared at him in classes. Some even asked him how he thought games were going to go, if they could pluck up the courage to ask. Mostly it wasn’t either of those things that bothered him the most though. Mostly it was just that everyone had a tendency to leave Victor feeling like he was an exotic animal trapped in a zoo.

“Huh,” the cashier said. They handed Victor back his ID. “Don’t drink it all at once.”

Victor smiled, made himself chuckle a little. “I won’t,” he promised.

He gathered everything up in his arms again. The cashier ran around the counter and held open the door for him.

“Have a good year!” They called as he retreated down the steps out front. “Can’t wait to see you on the ice!”

Victor let out a little cheer in lieu of turning around, or giving them a thumbs up. The summer had been lonely, but at least it’d been quiet. He had forgotten what it was like to just to blend in with the townies, to not be Victor Nikiforov, the star hockey player and just be plain old Victor, buying his groceries at Kroger with everyone else.

Chris honked car horn and whooped, leaning out the passenger window, and Victor, in spite of everything, found it in himself to smile.


	4. Chapter 4

True to Emil’s word, the corner bedroom was big, or at least, bigger than Yuri had expected. The beds weren’t bunked, but each were lofted in separate corners of the room. There were two windows, with a desk under each of them. Midday light came in through the windows and made the whole room seem comfortable and familiar, even thought it was empty. 

“We can move the furniture around when your roommate arrives,” Yuri’s dad said, looking around. “But otherwise...not too bad.”

“Do you know when he’s coming Yu-bear?” His mom asked. 

Yuri blushed. He hadn’t thought to try and contact Phichit when he’d gotten the rooming assignment this summer. For one thing, there hadn’t been any contact information, and it wasn’t like he was adept enough at Instagram or Facebook to figure out how to find the other boy on social media, anyways. He had just figured that Phichit would be here, that move-in would be a much more orderly and formal process than it was turning out to be. 

“That’s alright,” his dad said, laughing. “We’ll just meet him when he gets here. For now though, why don’t you pick a bed, Yuri? And then we can go pick everything up from the store that we ordered, and your stuff from the post office.” 

“Okay,” he said, and dumped his backpack on the bed just around the corner from the door. 

His parents led the way back out into the hallways. More people had shown up, a few of the guys jostling each other and asking how their summers had been. Family members walked around them, carrying bags and boxes, bookshelves and chairs. It was overwhelming, and it left Yuri feeling...hollowed out. He’d been this close with the guys on the team back home, too. Over at Mark’s every other night of the week, talking strategy with Casper during their classes and when coach wasn’t looking during practice. And then he’d let them all down. His fault. It was always his fault. How long would it take before they all realized what kind of person he was? Until he was an outsider? 

To be perfectly honest, he already felt like one, so...maybe not too soon. 

“Hey, Yuri!” Emil called as he walked by. 

Yuri paused and Emil dodged a parade of family members to catch up with him. 

“Are you heading out to get your stuff now?” Emil asked. 

Yuri started to respond, but Emil was already barging ahead. 

“Let me know when you get back and a bunch of us can help you move in. Do you want my number? I can add you to the team GroupMe.”

“Sure,” Yuri stammered. Emil was already pulling his phone out of his pocket. 

“Just type it in there and I’ll text you. We’re all heading over to the house tonight too, if you want to come with.”

“The...house…?” Yuri asked. 

Emil waved his hands, as if trying to physically clear away Yuri’s confusion. “The upperclassmen this year are all living in a house together and Chris and Victor decided to have a little--” Emil’s eyes flicked briefly back to Yuri’s parents, and then to Yuri, “--get together so that we can all get to know each other a little better before practice tomorrow.”

“Oh, um…” Yuri said. He glanced back at his parents. He’d been looking forward to grabbing a bite to eat with them tonight, dragging out their time together for as long as he could before they had to leave again. 

“I don’t know…” he started. 

“Don’t worry about us, Yuri!” his mom said. “You should hang out with your friends!”

Yuri thought that was perhaps the most liberal use of the word “friends” he had ever heard. These people were, for now, complete strangers to him. They could not also be his friends. 

“We’ll just get lunch or something together while we’re out, and then your mom and I can go back towards the airport, and kill some time in the city.”

“Okay,” Yuri said meekly. 

Emil grinned broadly, and thumped his on his back, like if they had known each other for years. 

“Great! See you later, Yuri!” 

He turned and retreated back into the crowd. Yuri briefly considered wheeling on his parents, and insisting that they spend the night together, but he didn’t want to look weak. Besides, he was trembling too much to muster the willpower. Instead, he set back off down the hall, weaving around other players and their family members and was thankful when no one seemed to notice him at all. 

***

Thankfully, everything they needed fit into the compact: Yuri’s clothes and books that they’d shipped from home, the linens they’d ordered from pick-up at the Target. Yuri felt crammed in like a can of sardines, but they made it work. Afterwards, they got lunch together in the little section of town attached to the campus. They sat on the patio outside the little sandwich shop, in the shade of a tall oak tree that grew along the fence. Yuri watched people. His parents talked about how quaint everything was. 

He didn’t know what had happened to Mark and Casper after that last game. He hadn’t talked to them. He’d stopped sitting by Casper in their classes, and hadn’t answered any of Mark’s calls. He knew what he had done. He didn’t want to increase his shame by asking for forgiveness he knew he didn’t deserve. How could you keep having a good relationship with somebody when the size of Yuri’s mistakes were so big? 

You couldn’t. Which is why they had all stopped being friends last spring. Yuri had very quietly and politely taken his leave, just as he knew he was meant to. 

But all the same, something in him itched to pull out his phone, send them a snap of everything he was seeing. Maybe they had moved into school today too. Maybe they had already met their teams and started practice. Maybe they were just as nervous about playing with new people as he was. These past few months had been lonely, especially as the summer wore on. They used to spend every day at the rink practicing their skills, or on the streets playing in roller blades if they couldn’t get on the ice. 

There mistakes had never mattered before when there was always a next season. They could spend all their time together working on getting better without having to worry about what it was specifically they were working  _ for.  _

But time marched onward, as it always did. Their mistakes,  _ Yuri’s _ mistakes, hadn’t mattered until they did. They had all the time to improve, until they hadn’t anymore. 

He tried to dredge up that feeling that he had had earlier, that this could be a great year, when he’d been staring at the promise of his empty room. This was a blank slate, a chance to start over. Maybe no one knew what had happened. Unlikely, but possible. Maybe this time, things would be different. Maybe this time, he wouldn’t let everybody down. Maybe, just maybe, he could rise from the ashes of his mistakes. 


	5. Chapter 5

Sometime in the afternoon, Nishigori showed up and moved into the room in the basement with the help of his girlfriend, Yuuko. JJ pulled up eventually too, and Victor hid in his room until his girlfriend showed up and JJ was safely secured in the remaining corner bedroom for the time being. 

Guys from the team started showing up at the house around seven. Victor did not know when any of them had eaten dinner. Victor desperately hoped that all of them had eaten dinner. He and Chris had grilled out on the back patio. Well, Victor had grilled out. Chris had kicked back on their little outdoor table set and played music on his bluetooth speaker while he drank a seltzer, or as Chris liked to call it, “spicy water.” 

Carson and Josh showed up first, followed by Chase, who greeted Chris with a smile before the two of them immediately launched into talk about classes and the semester. This left the freshman Chase had bought with him hopelessly abandoned, and thus began Victor’s captainly upperclassmen duties of the night. Scott and James wandered in and Victor barely marked them as he tried to get the freshman--who had only given up his name, Otabek--to make conversation. Before long, though, the house was overrun by the rest of the team. Mickey marched in, and then Emil, leading a veritable parade of freshman who clung to him like if he was their only hope for survival. That, at least, made Victor smile. 

Mickey and Emil were two sides of the same coin, and compliments to each other in every way. Mickey was ruthlessly efficient, on and off the ice. He had a laser-like focus on whatever he was doing in any given moment, and would plow through anyone who would get in his way. Emil was easy going and laid back. He was forgetful, and easily distracted. Individually, Mickey was clearly the stronger player, Emil...not so much. But when they were on the ice together, they could be a ruthless team, even if they played different lines. So it was no surprise then, that Emil had adopted the freshmen, and they had adopted him in turn, and no surprise either that Mickey wasn’t wasting his time on them. 

“Good crowd,” Chris said, appearing at Victor’s shoulder. “Look at them, all bright-eyed and bushy tailed. They have no idea what’s in store for them.” 

Victor laughed. “Remember when you were that young?” 

“Oh, sure,” Chris said. “I don’t think there was a party on our first night here, though, when I came along. But I remember all the guys in the corridor hanging out. We watched a romcom.”

“Keith put that on,” Victor said, smiling. 

“Still can’t believe he left us,” Chris said. 

Victor just shrugged. “He had an opportunity to go pro. He took it. I can’t say I blame him.”

There was a long moment of silence before Chris said anything again. Victor assumed the conversation was over from there, but then Chris came at his blind spot. 

“You could’ve gone too,” Chris said. 

Victor’s heart skipped a beat. Yeah. He could have gone pro, a year before he’d finished college. It was every skater’s dream. It was, presumably, what they were all here for. Not necessarily to get an education, but to get a career. Specifically, a career playing hockey. 

But when he’d gotten the offer...Victor had hesitated. He’d thought of the team. Of Chris, of Nishigori. Of Emil and Mickey. Of all the freshmen coming in. He’d done the math in the mind, adding up how much they all meant to him, and who would take over if he left, and he hadn’t liked the end result of the equation. 

He hadn’t even told his father about the offer. Maybe he should have, just to prove to the old man what he had, but Victor also hadn’t wanted him interfering. 

“This comes first,” Victor said, nodding at the team scattered across the ground floor of the house around and in front of them. “Setting an example. Being part of a family. This comes first.”

Chris shook his head, but he was smiling. “Have you ever considered that maybe we don’t deserve you?” he asked.

Victor popped a grin. “Sure,” he said, “but I think it also comes down to whether or not I deserve all of you too.”

He patted Chris’ shoulder and walked away before his friend could comment on that. Victor didn’t need Chris’ opinion on his decisions, but he had meant what he had said. Hockey had its individual all stars, just like any sport. Sidney Crosby. Wayne Gretzky. Toews. Kane. Ovechkin. Victor knew them all and aspired to join their ranks one day, but he also was ultimately of the opinion that the “greats” meant nothing without their teams, and if you couldn’t stand by your team, well…

Well then, you didn’t deserve to be great. 

Someone found a big speaker somewhere and music started bumping thought the house. Victor wandered through the crowd, which was only made massive by the narrow hallways and tight corners. He never thought of the team as being big until they were all crowded together like this. There was only 29 of them, after all. It was like some of the other teams at Avon, where it was so easy to get lost in a sea of athletes vying for the top. 

“Victor!” 

He looked up to see Nishigori calling him, his teammate tucked into the corner of the stairs, his Yuuko next to him. 

“Hey, Victor,” she said with a smile. 

He gave her a wave, and then bumped fists with Nishigori. He tucked himself against the wall to avoid the tide of his teammates going back and forth from the alcohol in the kitchen to the little groups of people spread around the ground floor of the house. 

“What’s up, man?” Victor asked. 

“Trying to find a guy I know,” Nishigori said. “Yuri. We were on juniors together, way back when. Just a year, but he was a pretty good player then. I’m excited to have him on the team this year.”

Victor quirked a brow. “I see you’re looking very hard,” he said. 

Nishigori just waved this away. “I’m comfortable, and I don’t want to have to go into the masses if I have to. I have an eye on the room. If I see him, I’ll call him.”

“Well, what’s he look like?”

“Black hair, glasses, nervous disposition, kind of quiet,” Yuuko said. “He’s a sweet kid. If you ruin him, I’ll be upset.” 

“You all know each other?” 

“We went to school together,” Yuuko clarified, “and I his sister was in a few of my classes. I always liked both of them, but I’m a little worried about Yuri. He’s a creature of habit, and crowds of people have never been his scene.” 

“I’ll keep an eye out for him for you,” Victor said. “Send him your way if I see him.”

“Thanks Vic,” Yuuko said, Nishigori echoing her. 

Victor took his leave and stepped back out into the masses. There were a couple of girls bouncing around, probably girlfriends of the sophomores, if he had to guess, and a few of their friends from the women’s club team who must have moved in early. He caught a glimpse of John and Chris retreating through Chris’ door and smirked. He chatted with a few of the freshmen, most of whom were handling their first college party pretty well. 

All in all, it was shaping up to be a great night. Or at least it was, until her slipped through the door to the dining room and bumped into a freshmen. 

A freshmen who looked at him with wide scared eyes behind blue half-framed glasses and then threw up on Victor’s feet before Victor could even process what to say to him. 


	6. Chapter 6

Yuri’s day only went downhill from the moment that he returned to the dorm. His skin felt too tight. He was feverish. He was sweating so much that he had chills. He almost questioned if he had eaten something off at lunch that day, except that he knew food poisoning didn’t start that quickly. His headache started as the team, led by Emil, started helping him to move everything in. There were too many people around, pressing up against him, barely giving him room to breathe. He lost sight of his parents a few times and panic squeezed his chest every time it happened. At one point, a wave of nausea washed over him, and he tried to scoot discreetly away to use the bathroom before anything bad happened.  

He opened the door to find his roommate, also followed by a small army of teammates carrying his things, on the other side. 

His father worked with Phichit and the rest of the team to move around some of the furniture. 

Yuri’s headache shifted from a dull ache to a steady throb. 

Teammates got in his way as he tried to unpack. 

Yuri pushed open one of the windows in a feeble attempt to get some air, and cool off. 

His parents said their goodbyes and left. 

A wave of dizziness so strong hit Yuri that he almost had to sit down. 

But he smiled through all of it, kept up a cheerful banter. He fell into the team life if nothing was wrong, and tried to convince himself that was the case. He counted down the hours until he could curl up in bed and just pass out from exhaustion, when everyone would leave him alone, finally let him have some peace. When someone mentioned heading over to the house for Victor and Chris’ party, once all the parents and family members were gone, bile rose in Yuri’s throat. 

He did not want to go out. He didn’t want to have to be bright and social and talk to people he didn’t know. He wanted to curl up in his room and wake up back in his bed in California. He wanted to be at St. Cloud State, or OSU, or Denver, or any one of the schools that had been recruiting him this time last year with Mark and Casper, just like the three of them had always planned. He did not want to be at Avon. He did not want to be without the two people who had kept him grounded his entire life. He did not want any of this to actually be happening. 

But it was, whether he wanted it to or not. 

Yuri followed everyone to the party, clinging to the crowd for support even as he did his best to distance himself from it. Someone handed him a can of beer and he drank it. Someone handed him a second one and he drank that too. He wandered around in a daze, barely registering the house around him, just knowing that there were people everywhere and that the hot press of everyone against him was making him claustrophobic and he needed to get out, out out. His headache got worse. Every time he felt sick he went to the bathroom and bent over the toilet, breathing heavily, but never threw up. He was so, so tired. He wanted a glass of water. He couldn’t find anywhere to get a glass of water. 

He had just turned to slip through a doorway in another feeble attempt to find the kitchen when he slammed into somebody.  Yuri had a moment to look up at him--pale hair that turned soft and gold in the lights, beautiful blue eyes; this boy was pretty, so pretty--and then nausea rolled over him again. 

He honestly wasn’t expecting anything to come up. 

He’d been dry heaving all night. 

But then he was blinking down at pretty-boy’s toes, covered in a good puddle of puke.  _ His  _ puke. 

The world around Yuri wheeled like a tilt-a-whirl and he swayed. Someone caught his shoulder with cool hands, and started guiding him away. He was led to a door. It took him a moment to realize that it was pretty-boy holding onto him. He felt bad about this. He had just thrown up on pretty-boy’s feet. Pretty-boy should not be taking care of him. He should be taking care of pretty-boy, or at least, getting out of pretty-boy’s way. 

Yuri tried to pull away. Pretty-boy just tightened his grip on Yuri’s shoulder and pulled him closer. Pretty boy tried the doorknob. It was locked. He sighed and studied Yuri. Yuri ducked his head because he Was Not Worthy to look into pretty-boys bright blue eyes. Unfortunately, this just gave Yuri a good view, once again, of the puke on pretty-boy’s feet. 

His stomach heaved again. 

“No!” Someone shouted, potentially pretty-boy. A hand was clasped to Yuri’s mouth. 

And then Yuri was being dragged away from the door, up some stairs, up some more stairs, through a door, and then another. He was delivered at a toilet, where he proceeded to lose the rest of the contents of his stomach once the hand was removed from his mouth. 

Pretty-boy crouched next to him, running a soothing hand down Yuri’s back. Yuri leaned his head on the edge of the toilet when he was done, and stared at pretty-boy. Pretty-boy stared back. He didn’t look mad or annoyed by Yuri. He just looked generally tired, and almost affectionate.

“I’m not drunk,” Yuri said, because he knew he had had only two beers, and he’d been feeling shitty all day, so it couldn’t have been the alcohol. 

Pretty-boy quirked an eyebrow, but he didn’t object. 

“Okay,” was all he said. 

He had a nice voice. Yuri closed his eyes. 

“It’s just--” Yuri said, trying to dredge up the right words. “I don’t belong here, not really.” 

Oh, God, he was going to cry. He could feel the tears prickling at the back of his eyes. He did not want to cry in front of pretty-boy. Puking on his feet had been bad enough. 

“Of course you do,” Pretty-boy murmured. “You’re part of our family now. You belong.”

Yuri just shook his head. He didn’t know how to explain it all to pretty-boy; that he already had a family, that he had lost that family by fucking up immensely in the Most Important Game Ever, that he missed California, and his dog, and his family, and his friends. 

The hand left Yuri’s back for a moment, and Yuri’s eyes flickered open, trying to find where pretty-boy had gone. But he was already back, handing Yuri a damp towel, and a cup of water. Pretty-boy sat on the edge of a tub a foot away, watching Yuri and wiping off his feet while Yuri took a sip of the water and started cleaning himself off. 

God, he was so tired. He shouldn’t have come out tonight, even if it would have cast the impression early that he was anit-social. He should have just gone to bed. 

“You going to be alright?” Pretty-boy asked after a minute or so. 

Yuri tried to find the strength or willpower to say anything, to shrug this all off and answer in the affirmative. 

“I’m tired,” fell out of his mouth instead of  _ I’m okay.  _

Pretty-boy smiled gently. His eyes squinted in a cute-ish way when he did it. The look overall made Yuri’s threadbare heart turn to goop. 

“Why don’t you take a little break up here for a bit, yeah?” Pretty-boy asked. “I’ll come check on you when it looks like things are dying down.” 

Yuri nodded. Now that sleep was on the table, he could feel his eyelids growing heavy, dragging him down, down down. 

Someone grabbed his hands and pulled him to his feet. Someone guided him to a bed and tucked soft covers up around him, brushed the hair back from his forehead and gently pulled his glasses off. 

Yuri didn’t say hear them say anything, if they did. He was asleep before the door clicked shut. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heh. Yuri thinks that Victor's pretty. :)
> 
> Wonder what Victor thinks of Yuri... 
> 
> Also! Hi! Thank you for the comments! They're making my day! :)


	7. Chapter 7

It was late, or potentially very early, by the time everyone was gone. It happened as it always did with these things, one or two people left, and then a few more, and then seemingly everybody, all at once. It was almost like an avalanche or a rainstorm, but in reverse. It was only after everyone had left that Victor realized he probably should have checked on the freshman he had left in his bed _before_ everyone left, instead of after.

Well, there was nothing to be done about it now. He left Chris and Georgi downstairs and jogged up to his room, doing his best not to slip on the narrow steps.

Really, it’d been a miracle that he’d been able to literally drag someone all the way up here before, but desperation must have lent him something. The downstairs bathroom had been locked for God knew what reason, and that had left him uncertain of the availability of the second floor bathroom as well. It hadn’t been a choice. His bathroom had just seemed like the best option.

He pushed open his door carefully when he got to the top of the stairs. There was barely a landing outside the door, which was to say, there was almost no landing at all, and he balanced precariously on the threshold as he ducked his head inside.

The string of white Christmas lights that Victor had tacked up around his room were on, as they almost always were, and by their soft light he could see the kid was still out cold. Figured. With a sigh, Victor closed his door and slipped back downstairs.

He knew he could have woken the guy up, made him go back home, but Victor remembered what he had said earlier, resting pitifully against the rim of the toilet.

_I don’t belong here._

Of course he belonged here. Of course, of course, of course. Even if there had been a part of Victor that had resented Yakov, only just this afternoon, for making him accept new members into his family after he'd just lost so many, the moment the whole parade of freshmen had come wandering through his door, bright eyed and humming with an untouchable energy, letting them into his heart hadn’t been any trouble at all. They were his brothers now, and he was going to look out for them. That’s what being on this team meant. That’s what being the captain _was._

But it was clear that this new boy--whatever his name was--didn’t feel like that, and until he did, Victor wasn’t going to do anything that might make him uncomfortable. He wasn’t going to tell anyone about the puke-on-his-feet incident, he wasn’t going to make the guy feel like an outside because he had to be driven back to the hall. Victor was going to look out for him, and do everything he could to make the guy feel like he had a place here.

Georgi had started picking up when Victor reached the ground floor again. Chris was curled up on the couch, half in Paul’s lap, scrolling through his phone.

“Hey, do you know who puked in our dining room?” Chris asked, glancing up briefly at Victor before turning back to his phone.

Victor’s shoulders drooped. In all the craziness that had come from solving the problem at hand, he had forgotten about the puddle of vomit he’d left behind.

“No idea,” he said, rubbing at his temples.

He wanted to go to bed, but there was a freshman there, which meant he’d have to take a couch for now.

But if he did that, then Chris would know that something was up, and Victor had the feeling that the fewer people who knew about this, the better.

God, he hated the fallout of parties. He always had. He should have just had everybody over for dinner, or a night of playing video games and cards.

“Don’t worry about it,” Georgi said, catching onto Victor’s frustration, “I already cleaned it up.”

“Thanks man,” Victor said. He collapsed into one of the armchairs clustered around the living room. “Where’d--”

“JJ went upstairs with Isabella,” Chris said. “No idea where Nishigori and Yuuko went. Maybe downstairs? Maybe to get ice cream? Who's to say.”

“Anya went to bed,” Georgi said when Victor’s eyes flicked to him.

“Awesome,” Victor muttered. Jesus, he could fall asleep right here.

The house fell quiet around him. The only sound was an occasional huffing laugh from Chris, or a murmured question from Paul, and the jostle of Georgi clearing out trash.

“I just realized you’re the only one here who’s single,” Chris said after a while.

Victor made himself look up. He hadn’t been dreaming, but it felt like he had. How much time had passed? Five minutes? Half an hour? Nothing was real this late at night.

“Oh yeah?” Victor asked, a little bit of cheek and humor slipping into his voice.

“Well, since Maggie dumped you at the end of last semester--” Chris started.

“Maggie did not dump me,” Victor objected. “It was mutual.”

“I seem to recall her saying something along the lines of ‘you love hockey more than me,’ and then storming out of the room.”

“Yeah, after I reminded her that we couldn’t go out that afternoon because _like I told her,_ I was working on stuff.”

“Bro, you were watching the Stanley playoff game.”

“That’s work! For me, a player who wants to get better, watching those games is _work.”_

“No it’s not,” Paul muttered.

Chris gestured to his boyfriend, if this was the keystone to his argument.

“We just need to find somebody who’s okay with you being in love with hockey,” Chris said.

“Why would anyone be okay with that?” Victor asked. “Why would anyone want to come in second place to that if I’m going to be in a relationship with them?”

“Are you saying you’re willing to put hockey second?” Chris asked.

“God, no,” Victor scoffed. “Hockey first, always.”

He pulled out his phone in a feeble attempt to show Chris how done with this conversation he was and started scrolling through insta. He liked a photo of Chris and Paul and felt a little petty as he did it.

“Oh, thanks man,” Chris said, evidently when the notification popped up, “that was a cute photo of us. But I’m not letting you run away from this. We need to find somebody who will fit into this criteria.”

“The only person who would be okay with Victor loving hockey is someone who also loved hockey,” Georgi said.

“Good point,” Chris said. He tapped his chin with the corner of his phone. “Maybe someone from the women’s team? Baby, what do you think?”

Victor didn’t give Paul the chance to respond, not that he thought Paul would have added anything meaningful to the conversation anyways.

“Won’t work,” Victor said, “Remember that time I dated Mila? Because I do. We never had time for each other.”

“You and Mila didn’t date,” Chris said. “You updated your relationship status on Facebook and happened to occupy the same space every now and then.”

“I had sex with her,” Victor said, frowning.

“Once,” Chris said. “And in this day and age that doesn’t mean anything. Plenty of people who aren’t dating sleep together.”

Victor rolled his eyes and went back to his phone. He needed the new players’ instagrams. And facebooks. And Snapchats. It would keep them in the loop socially, but it would also be a good way to keep his eye on all of them. How many of them felt like the boy upstairs did? That they didn’t belong here? How many would rather feel lonely than admit that openly?

“Club guys?” Paul asked.

“Same issue,” Victor and Chris chorused.

Chris scoffed lightly.

“How is it,” he asked, “that despite the fact that you are the absolutely bicon I needed in my life, and also have access to like, a significantly more percentage of the dating pool, that it is so impossible to find somebody for you?”

“The only people who fit your criteria are guys on the team,” Georgi called from the kitchen. “It’s more than having the same interests, it’s about loving the same things for similar reasons. Victor’s first love isn’t hockey, it’s this team, our family. Ergo, we need to find someone who will love this family as much as he does.”

Georgi appeared in the door of the kitchen, yellow gloves pulled up to his elbows. “And the only people Victor would ever deem loving his family sufficiently are people who are on the team.”

Victor’s heart fluttered. He could feel heat rushing to his cheeks. Chris’ jaw dropped.

“No,” Victor said firmly, at the same time Chris said “Absolutely not!”

“Why not?” Georgi asked. He leaned on the doorframe. “It’s not like there are rules against it.”

“I’m sure there are,” Chris said.

“People on the tennis team date all the time,” Paul said thoughtfully.

“That’s different,” Chris said. “You’re not--you’re not--”

“Playing together. All the time,” Victor provided.

“Exactly!” Chris said. “Listen, I’m all for playing matchmaker, but I’m not setting up Victor with somebody on the team. It’d be...wrong.”

“Why?” Georgi asked. “You used to think that Josh was ‘super cute’.”

“And he was,” Chris agreed, “but even then I recognized that I couldn’t _date him.”_

“You didn’t answer the question,” Paul noted.

He looked fully invested in the conversation now. Victor wanted to die.

“It _is_ wrong,” Victor finally said. “We’re...brothers. We have to know we can rely on each other. All of us, no matter what. And if we started dating each other, then…”

“Then what?” Georgi asked. “Then we couldn’t rely on each other? Bullshit. We’d rely on each other more.”

Victor just shook his head. “It’d be weird,” was all he said.

Georgi made a disparaging noise and went back to the kitchen. Chris, taking his cue that this discussion was finally over, stood up and stretched, then pulled Paul up too. Before he turned to go, though, Chris frowned at Victor.

“I’m going to find somebody for you,” Chris said. “I won’t have you living single and all alone in the attic. It sounds like the bad set-up to a horror movie, or the beginning of a tragedy.”

Victor laughed, but his heart wasn’t in it. “Good luck.”

“Victor?” Chris asked, and there was something uncertain in his voice that made Victor look up at him. “You wouldn’t ever actually date anyone on the team, would you? I mean, I think Georgi might be a little bit right, like, you need someone who doesn’t just love hockey, but the camaraderie too, and…”

He trailed off. Victor smiled and stood up to cross over to Chris.

“I promise you,” Victor said, giving Chris a tight hug. “I will _never_ date anyone on the team. I won’t even think about it.”

Chris relaxed. Victor felt the release of whatever tension had built up in his friend’s shoulders over the last few minutes released.

“I love you, Vic,” Chris said.

“Love you too, man,” Victor said, stepped away.

They bumped knuckles. Chris started dragging Paul towards his room.

“G‘Night!” Chris called.

“‘Night,” Victor called back.

He collapsed onto the couch and closed his eyes, even as he resolved not to fall asleep until he knew Goergi had gone to bed. Before he knew it though, he had fallen into dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't make promises you can't keep, Victor...


	8. Chapter 8

Soft grey morning light was filling up the room when Yuri finally woke up. It took him a moment to process where he was, that this slanted ceiling did not belong to his dorm room, that he had been left here last night after he had thrown up on some strangers feet. Yuri vaguely remembered somebody promising to come back and check him later, but he didn’t think that had ever actually happened. His glasses were resting on the little nightstand next to him. He reached over without really thinking about it and put them on. 

The important thing here was that the stranger was gone now, and Yuri and clearly slept in somebody else’s bed last night and overstayed his welcome. 

Great going, Katsuki. 

He wanted to be back in California. He wanted to hit “redo” on yesterday. He wanted to erase everything that had happened to him over the past year and replace it with a superior version of events. 

He processed all of this in seconds, and was out of the bed in a minute, slipping through the cracked door and down the narrow staircase. The house around him, thank god, was quiet. If he was lucky, he would be able to slip out of here without anyone being the wise. 

If he was lucky. Which Yuri rarely was, but sometimes, he liked to hope anyways. 

The stairs were old and creaked a little with every step. He cringed at the noise and tried convince himself that it wasn’t as loud as he thought. The real danger was actually in how narrow the steps were, and how slippery under his socks. He was pretty sure someone had dragged him upstairs last night. Whoever that had been could not be human. 

The downstairs of the house did not look like the kind of place that had been filled only the night prior with 29 college guys partying together. It looked as clean as clean as anywhere at the motel back home, which was to say, everything was organized and put away, but there was a lived-in feel, like if somebody had just left the room, and would be returning in a moment to carry on a conversation with you. Whoever had cleaned up after last night...well, they had Yuri’s respect. They certainly would have given his mother a run for her money. 

At the bottom of the stairs, Yuri looked around wildly and tried to remember where the door was. Last night had been a blur, and for the life of him right now, he couldn’t remember if he should turn left or right here. He also didn’t want to be stumbling around the house and risk discovery though. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and did his best to think it through. 

There are moments during tests when brains make strange connections. Certain things just feel, often inexplicably, like the right answer. Right now, Yuri was leaning right. He played as a right wing most often. He was one of the oddballs in skating who was more comfortable with his weight on his right side than his left. 

Right it would be then. 

The moment Yuri stepped through the doorway to his right, he realized he had made a mistake. 

Well, not quite a mistake, because he could see a tight curve of steps that led down to a side door from here, but he also felt like he had been unexpectedly thrown into the final castle fight of Super Mario Brothers. The entire house had been empty, waiting for him. Until now. 

Somebody was standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, scrolling quietly through their phone, a mug of coffee at their elbow. The faint morning light perfectly caught mused silver bangs, and the hint of sharp blue eyes. Yuri’s breath caught. He took a step back in a hasty retreat, but it was too late. The somebody in the kitchen--the very handsome somebody--looked up at him, their frown quickly turning into an easy smile. 

Yuri felt his heart jump a little. Oh, this was  _ so _ not fair. So, so, so not fair. He had decided ages ago that he wasn’t going to have crushes on his teammates anymore, and this guy? Obviously a teammate, and obviously not going to make that rule easy for him. 

“Hey,” Mr. Beautiful said. 

Oh, and of course his voice just had to be perfect too. Yuri wanted to pummel him for this. Pummel him and his stupid, perfect face, with that elegant, high forehead, and those eyes that squinted just right when he smiled, and that sharp jawline…

Rude. All of it. 

All the same, it took Yuri a second too long to find his words. 

“I was just going,” he stammered. 

Mr. Beautiful smile widened (almost heart shaped. Again: rude and unfair), he laughed softly (also perfect, Yuri wanted to cancel this entire morning for completely different reasons now). 

“So soon?” he asked. 

Yuri could feel his face turning red. 

“My roommate will be wondering where I am.”

“Oh, that is a good point,” Mr. Beautiful mused. “Still, though. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? Breakfast in general? Not to boast, but I’m rather fond of my scrambled eggs.” 

“I really should go,” Yuri said, edging slowly towards the stairs that led to the door. 

“Do you want a ride?” 

“That,” Yuri squeaked, far too quickly, curse him, “will not be necessary.”

Mr. Beautiful quirked a brow. “Are you sure? I mean, I wouldn’t want you to get lost.” 

Oh, and here was the icing on the cake. Mr. Beautiful needed no demonstration of how generally incapable Yuri was at...everything. He was somehow already perfectly aware. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. If it was possible for Yuri to blush any more than he already was, then he did. 

“I just mean that I figured you’re a freshman,” Mr. Beautiful said, for some reason...almost rushing to explain himself? 

“And I know campus is confusing,” he continued, “Melrose isn’t that big, but everything looks the same, and I figured you wouldn’t just, you know, want to be wandering around aimlessly when I could show you the way.” 

“I’m fine,” Yuri said. 

He wanted to disappear. He felt like he was on the verge of spontaneously combusting. 

“Okay,” Mr. Beautiful said. 

The word clicked a memory into place in Yuri’s brain. He realized who Mr. Beautiful was a second before he spoke again. 

“I’m Victor, by the way,” Mr. Beautiful said. “What’s your name again? I don’t think I caught it last night.”

It was him.  _ He’d  _ been the one who’d grabbed Yuri.  _ He’d _ been the superhuman who had dragged Yuri up those killer stairs. It was  _ his _ bed that Yuri had slept in last night. 

It was  _ his _ feet that Yuri had puked on last night. 

A second ago, he hadn’t thought it was possible, but here it was. He had actually just hit rock-bottom. This situation really  _ had _ gotten worse than it already could have. Yuri wanted to die from embarrassment.

“I’m Yuri,” he breathed. 

If he was even capable of breathing still, which Yuri wasn’t certain that he was. 

But Pretty-Boy, Mr. Beautiful, Victor, just smiled again. Softly, comfortingly. Like if he didn’t care about anything that had happened last night, even though that was impossible. Of course he cared. Of course he had offered Yuri a ride; he wanted Yuri out of his house as soon as possible. It all made sense now. 

“Nishigori’s friend?” Victor asked instead of...literally anything that Yuri would have thought he would say. 

Wow, this morning was just going to keep getting worse and worse, wasn’t it? Because of course Takeshi, Techy, went here, and they would be playing on the same team again now, something that Yuri had forgotten but Techy evidently hadn’t. Of course techy had told beautiful Victor this. Because when  _ didn’t _ the universe have to conspire to make life an actual, living hell of embarrassment for Yuri?

“Yeah,” Yuri said. He didn’t recognize his own voice. Maybe if he closed his eyes and wished hard enough, then all of this would just go away, and he would wake up and everything would be fine again. 

Well, as fine as anything could be. 

“Huh,” Victor said though. “Well, I guess I’ll see you at practice later then.” 

“See you later,” Yuri said. 

It was the best opening for escape that Yuri was going to get. He took it, and tried not to make it look like he was too desperate to get out of that whole experience as he rushed down the stairs and out the door into the morning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey fam! Busy week this week; thanks for hanging tight with me. I hope you enjoyed this very flustered Yuri :)


	9. Chapter 9

Victor didn’t linger too long in the kitchen drinking his coffee after Yuri left. Last night had been an interesting situation, and he definitely wanted to talk to the kid at length later about...everything, but for now, that could be delayed. He had slightly more pressing things he had wanted to attend to this morning, before Chris and Georgi and everyone else in the house could bother him too much. 

Years ago, someone had covered one of the walls in the dining room with whiteboards, probably an overzealous captain who couldn’t help but bring the team home with them.  One of the boards was painted with the basic layout of a hockey rink, because of course it was. The other was blank. In previous years, Victor assumed it’d been used as a general to do list for the team, a place to write down goals and new strategies. 

Last year, it’d been left as catch-all for dirty jokes and lude drawings. The team hadn’t worried about bringing their work home with them last year. They’d sat comfortably in the middle of the conference all year, and had a decent showing at the tournament. Their captain, Tony Mayer, had been a good guy, and he’d been good at uniting the team when it really counted, but he had never really pushed the them all to be  _ better.  _ Victor wanted to change that this year. 

A captain had to be a leader, someone who could direct the team on the ice, and pull everyone together for strong plays, but he also had to inspire everyone to be the best version of themselves. It was going to be a hard year; Victor knew that. He was trying his best to come to terms with the fact that they probably wouldn’t be doing anything incredibly noteworthy this year. So, goals first then. He could flesh them out with Chris later, Chris with his marketing major and leadership minor who literally had to do this every year for his classes. 

Goal One: 

Victor stared at the words after he wrote them. He had always liked his handwriting, the way each letter got its own space, how his lines were always perfectly straight. He tried to divine something from the curve of the “O’s” and the neat shape of the “G.” 

Set the bar too low and the team wouldn’t be motivated to work hard and improve. Set the bar too high, and it would just be another disappointment at the end of an already difficult season. Last year, they’d won about half of their games overall, maybe a little less in the actual conference. The year before that, they’d come in second in the conference. The year before that, they’d won the national title. The team had been in decline for a while, Victor supposed. It had just taken him a little while to realize it. 

_ Win 40% of our games.  _ Victor wrote first. It was a pitiful goal, but it should be enough to keep them from coming dead-last in the conference, at least. Maybe even two or three above last. 

He tapped his lip with the end of the marker and tried to think of what else he should add. Half the team would be freshmen this year. They’d be coming from different teams, with their own playing styles and expectations. Some of them had probably been big fish in little ponds; they’d chafe under new leadership. Almost certainly, there’d be a steep learning curve. For all of them, as they tried to get used to each other, and the new team dynamic. 

_ Be a TEAM.  _ Victor wrote next, and then, in parentheses next to it,  _ limit disagreements, support each other, operate like a family. _

Two down. One more to go. Victor had always preferred doing things in threes; he was the youngest of three brothers, the team leadership had always had three people, there were three different positions on in hockey. He was (technically) studying three different things. But for all he stared at the whiteboard, and at his words marching on towards small victories, he could only draw blanks. 

He was still sitting there, contemplating if he should just leave the last one until after practice, when Georgi and Chris woke up and stumbled through the process of making coffee before settling in besides him. 

“You should make it ‘Get an S.O.,’” Chris said. “‘Bang a lot of boys,’ ‘fall in love with someone outside of hockey.’”

“Graduate,” Georgi contributed. 

“It’s a team goal,” Victor said dryly. 

Chris pulled the marker out of Victor’s hand. In his curly handwriting he wrote  _ Goal Three: Stay Positive, Dream Big.  _

“Be serious,” Victor said, scoffing. He reached to yank the marker out of Chris’ hand, but his friend danced away. 

“I am being serious,” Chris said. “Here’s the S.M.A.R.T. Goal format of that--” 

Victor and Georgi both groaned, although their truly had been no way of avoiding this. In fact, Victor had been expecting it. 

“S--Specific, we’re talking about a certain attitude we need to maintain as a team. M--Measurable, we can do this by having everyone write individual goals, and by making sure we all share something positive after every game, or practice, as necessary. Also, we take a poll and check on how people are feeling every week. Quick survey. Simple.” 

“Achievable,” Georgi said, begrudgingly joining in. “Being positive and aspiring towards something higher can be difficult, but we can do it if we focus.”

“Relevant and Time-Bound,” Victor finished. “We can’t do shit if we’re all disenfranchised, and we only have the length of the season.” 

“Did you seriously just use the word ‘disenfranchised,’  _ before _ noon?” Georgi asked. 

“I think he did,” Chris said. 

They looked at each other, a twinkle in their eyes. Victor just shook his head, amused. 

“New rule,” Chris said. He wrote  _ RULEZ _ on the whiteboard below their goals. “No big words before breakfast.” 

Victor waited for Chris to finish, then reached over and snagged the marker from him. 

“Word of the day,” Victor said as he wrote it on the board. “ _ Fatuous. _ You have until dinner to figure out what it means. Bonus points if you can use it in a sentence.” 

He swiped a red check mark on Chris’ cheek, then jogged towards the stairs. 

“Did you just call us  _ fat?”  _ Chris called after him. 

Victor’s only answer was the cackle he sent echoing down the stairs. 


	10. Chapter 10

Mickey and Emil led all of them over to the rink for practice, just as they had led them to the party the night before. He had wandered back to this room this morning to find Phichit still completely passed out in bed, which was fine for Yuri. It saved it from having to explain himself. No, though, as they all marched in a row down the block, carrying their athletic bags with them, Yuri tried to look around and figure out the lay of the land. It was odd, not having Mark and Cooper next to him. They’d always been together, their entire lives. He had never played hockey without them. Not even in gym class when they just played with a wiffle ball on the floor. 

All in all, there were about twenty of them in this little parade. Phichit chatted with everybody as if they were old friends. He even chatted with Yuri as if they’d played together before, which Yuri was pretty sure had never happened, but he supposed was possible. Mickey avoided all the freshmen, and talked tersely with the other sophomores. Emil kept dropping back in the line, trying to learn everybody’s names, and then calling something up to Mickey and forgetting what he was doing, or who he had been talking to. 

If Yuri couldn’t still feel his stomach rolling, if Mark and Cooper had been here with him, if he hadn’t been convinced that coming here was one of the worst mistakes of his life, maybe he would have smiled. Maybe he would have been excited about the prospect of joining a new team, figuring out how he could fit into a new dynamic, how he could contribute his strengths best. But instead, an alarm at the back of his mind had started blaring again. Turn back! It said. Danger ahead! There is no lifeguard on duty to save you if you drown! 

This would be easier if he had a safety net. Someone to catch him in case he fell. 

He’d been Mark’s safety net for as long as he could remember, and Cooper had been his. He had no one to catch him here. No one he could really rely on. Techy, maybe, but he hadn’t seen the guy in years. Techy had been older, and Yuri had been hard-headed, eager to prove himself, and too caught up in shenanigans with his friends. Last night he had really lucked out when Pretty-Boy Victor had decided to help, but once the rest of the team got word of what happened, as they most certainly would, it would be over for him. 

Maybe he would be better off quitting the team now, while he still could. 

But a lifetime without hockey...that was an unbearable thought. He had tried to give it up after The Incident last winter, the biggest failure of his life, and it had been painful. He’d missed the game too much, the rush he could only get from speeding down the length of the ice, stick in hand, the surge of joy that came every time he scored a goal, the satisfaction of sending off a perfect pass, and the comfort of the puck hitting the blade of his stick. He had settled for playing without Mark and Cooper, which was only a marginally less painful experience, but the only compromise he’d been willing to make with himself.

Yuri followed everyone up an imposing set of steps, under the brick archway, and inside the doors to the building. It took his eyes a minute to adjust from the bright afternoon to the dim interior, lit only now by the natural light streaming in through the skylights. What he saw as he looked around though wasn’t that impressive. Posters lining the hallway from the hockey team’s golden years. Display cases advertised gear the could be purchased at the pro shop. Banners hung from beams across the ceiling showed old team members, posed in action shots after they went after the puck. The history of the program, it weighed down on Yuri, even as it tried to make itself grander than it actually way, or had become. 

“This way!” Mickey called from the head of the line

He led them down a set of stairs to a lobby. A few guys were sitting in chairs, waiting for something, Yuri supposed. He recognized Pretty Victor chatting with a blond boy immediately. And there was Techy, peering at all the freshmen, looking for a familiar face. Yuri ducked behind a group of people and ducked his head. He didn’t want to be seen. He didn’t want to be acknowledged. He just wanted to be another nameless face in the crowd. 

“Hey, Vic,” Yuri thought he heard Mickey say. 

The guys around him chit chatted a little, or jostled each other. It was almost like if they all had pre-game jitters, even though the only opponent they were about to face was the weighty expectations of their new coach, and the rest of the team. Yuri, for once though, almost felt calm. Yakov had been to California, last year. He’d been part of the reason why Yuri had been able to convince himself to pick up hockey again. Yakov didn’t scare Yuri like he did the other boys. 

_ You can get back up and keep fighting, or you can let 20 bad minutes rule your entire life.  _

It was thinking about actually being on the team that made Yuri’s heart stop cold, not having to meet high expectations. He’d been meeting high expectations his entire life, his and everybody else's. 

“Alright!” Somebody called over the crowd. 

It sounded a little like Pretty Victor. Yuri’s heart jumped. 

“We’re going to head back to the locker room. I have the roster, and I’ll make sure you’re all set up before we start getting any of the real work in. Uh, welcome to Avon, welcome to Melrose, and let’s have a good season!” 

A few of the guys whooped. Yuri allowed himself a smile, and then followed the crowd down a hallway, doing his best not to touch anybody, or be too noticeable. A clean start. This was a clean start. That’s what Yakov had offered him, an opportunity to put those terrible 20 minutes behind him and start completely fresh. He was not, and no longer wood be Yuri Katsuki, Swooping Evil, King Wing Extraordinaire, K-man, Ice-ace, a third of the mighty Triple Threat. 

He was just Yuri Katsuki, and that would be enough. 

At the door of the locker room--which seemed almost too fancy to be real--Pretty Victor stood with a clipboard, marking off names and directing people to cubbies. When Yuri stepped forward, he looked up and smiled a little. 

“Yuri, right? Katsuki, I’m guessing? You’re number nine. You’re cubbie’s over there. Drop your stuff, get changed for a gym workout, and then sit tight. Yakov usually likes to talk to us before the first practice.” 

“Thanks,” Yuri said, the word somehow stumbling out of his mouth. 

Victor’s smile just grew, almost encouraging, as if he knew Yuri’s past, every failure and mistake, and forgave Yuri for all of it. 

“You’re going to be great,” Victor promised. “I just know it.”


	11. Chapter 11

Victor was chatting with Chris when Yakov walked into the room. He’d handed out gear to all team gear to the newbies--t-shirts, practice jerseys, the usual--and give them their assignments. He’d always liked the locker room, organized not by position or class, but by jersey number. They were integrated on the team. The only thing that mattered here was your loyalty to your teammates, which led to supporting them, which led to how well you played on the ice.

The room went silent as soon as everyone realized who was standing in front of them. Victor slipped back to his seat. Chris smirked.

“Welcome back,” Yakov said, “and to our new players, welcome to your new family. The season starts on October 1st, gentlemen. That’s five weeks away. 35 days. Half of you are freshmen. The vast minority of you are seniors and juniors. Let me get something clear right now; no matter whether this is your first day as part of our program, or the beginning of the end--”

 Victor cringed. He knew Yakov meant nothing by it, but that thought...that he was on a ticking clock here...it was terrifying.

“Forget whatever it was that’s come before today. None of it matters. No victories, no losses. This may as well be, for all intents and purposes, a brand new team. You all need to learn how to play with each other and depend on one another, on and off the ice. I’d like to tell you right now that you can, but I can’t. That’s something you all still need to prove to one another.”

Yakov paused, probably to give them all a minute to mull that thought over. Victor thought about everyone he’d been playing with for the last three years, his brothers who had moved on to bigger and better things, and he cast them out of his mind. He looked at the players around him, all the new faces with the old peppered in. Chris was his best friend. Georgi had been with him from the beginning. Nishigori had a rock solid defence he had come to trust and rely on. He knew the sophomores less--they’d all had so few chances to prove themselves last year. But Mickey showed promise as a center, and Emil was figuring out the ins and outs of working on the D-pair.

What of the freshmen, though? What would they bring to the team? Yuri was a few people down from him, but that’s where Victor’s mind immediately flew.

_I don’t belong here._

But what had Yakov seen in each of them? What had led the old men to recruit each of them for the team?

Victor supposed it was up to him--as well as all the other upperclassmen on the team--to figure it out, and to use those skills to their best advantage.

“That all begins today. You decide what kind of team you’re going to be. Each and every minute from here until you graduate, it’s _your_ responsibility to create something on and off that you’re proud to call your own. Understood?”

A chorus of mumbled “yesses” answered him.

Yakov smiled, or at least, he came as close to a smile as he ever got. “Good. Now, Victor’s going to be the captain this year--”

Victor looked around at everyone and gave a little wave

“--and Georgi and JJ are the alternates.”

Georgi smiled. JJ let out a whoop.

Victor sighed and very pointedly looked away when Chris tried to catch his eye. Yes, he had known that Yakov had appointed JJ as an alternate captain. No, he had not told Chris. There would be discussion about all of this later, he was sure, but until then…

“Alright,” Yakov said at last. “Let’s begin.”

***

It was by some unknown grace of God that Yuri got through practice. He hadn’t talked to anyone as he’d gotten changed, and he’d spent most of the time before Yakov had walked in--when everyone else was chatting with each other, greeting old friends and making new ones--once again questioning all the life decisions that had led him to this point.

His heart had stopped when Yakov had walked in. They’d met that spring, back when Yuri had given up on hockey and had been trying to figure out what to do with his life if all his dreams had crumbled to ash. Yakov had flown all the way out to California, to the little motel Yuri’s family called their home. He’d caught Yuri doing his homework while Yuri’d been working his required shift at the bell desk and asked Yuri precisely what it was he thought he was doing with his life.

The conversation that had followed was the only reason Yuri was here at all, and looking back at it now seemed like trying to remember a dream. It hadn’t been real, and yet: here he was.

Yuri had tried not to look at the old coach while he’d marched through his speech, afraid almost that if Yakov saw him, he too would question why Yuri was here. All the same, though, he had felt Yakov’s eyes on him in the middle of it, when the team had been directed to forget about everything that had come before now. It was an impossible task, Yuri knew, but he wanted to believe in it anyways. He wanted to believe that he could put all that behind him.

What would it take to have a fresh start? A real one?

Yuri was almost afraid of the answer.

But he made it through the afternoon. He, who had forgotten so many months how to work with a team, the best way to keep in shape for everything that hockey demanded of him. He did it. And as Yuri stepped out of the rink into the bright sunshine of the late afternoon with the rest of his teammates, his new family, as Yakov had put it, there was kernel in him that wondered if maybe, just maybe, he might be able to make it through the rest of the season too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Split perspective for this one! Wild! 
> 
> Thank you for being patient with me; school has been hitting me hard for the past two weeks, and this is the first time I've been able to write for a while. 
> 
> As always, thank you for commenting! :)


	12. Chapter 12

In the evening, Victor lay on Chris’ bed while his friend continued to unpack around him. He was thinking about the freshmen, what he had seen from all of them today. Katsuki wasn’t bad, but he was out of shape. The new goalie--Chulanot, or something like that--he could shape up to be a good backup for Chris. And Atlin...out of all of the newbies, he was probably the best of the lot. Too bad he was a D-man though. He’d be helpful for Georgi, and maybe a top-scoring blue-liner, but Victor wouldn’t get very much of him.

He wondered what Chris thought of all of them, but he didn’t want to ask. Sure, his life may have revolved around hockey and the team, but Chris’ didn’t. And besides...Chris probably wouldn’t form any sturdy opinions of anyone until he got to know them better. That’s how Chris had always been, even on the ice. Give him a little bit to get used to the lay of the land, and then once he had it, well, he was golden. 

As if on cue, Victor felt something light hit his side. He cracked open his eyes a little to see what Chris holding a nerf gun, a bemused, if aggravated, look on his face. 

“Stop thinking about hockey,” Chris directed him. “We’re only a day into things.” 

“You’re asking for the impossible,” Victor grumbled. 

He rolled onto his side and watched Chris set down the nerf gun and pop open the lid of another rubbermaid. 

“Why didn’t you do all of this yesterday?” Victor asked. “I can’t believe you’d put it off.”

“Paul came over and I got distracted,” Chris said cheerily. “And then people came over and I got distracted again.” 

“Mmmmm.”

“You used to be a lot more fun,” Chris teased. 

“I used to have a lot less responsibility,” Victor replied. 

Chris sighed. He started pulling out shirts and putting them into the little dresser between his door and the closet. 

“This is what I mean, though. This is why you need to get away from hockey. Even when you’re not actively stressed out about it, it’s all you ever let yourself think about. You lost track of what it’s like to have a life, be in love something that’s  _ not _ this. You need balance.”

“And you really think I’m going to get that by dating somebody?” 

“No,” Chris admitted, “but I think they can help you find it. No one wants to date somebody whose life revolves around one or two things, after all. You need a little more depth to you.” 

“I have plenty of depth,” Victor said. “I read. I like books. I like writing. I speak french--fluently.” 

“That’s not depth, those are just...markers. Like your hair. You don’t  _ do _ anything with them. When’s the last time you read something that wasn’t for class and actually cared about it? When’s the last time you wrote something that wasn’t about sports for  _ The Report?” _

Victor didn’t respond, mostly because he didn’t have an answer. Chris was right. These days, he only read when it was a class assignment, and even then, he didn’t read everything he was supposed to. He didn’t always have time, not when he had hockey. And when he did, he always put that towards hockey too. Chris’ point about  _ The Reporter,  _ the student-run newspaper on campus, was a fair one too. When he’d joined as a freshman, he’d written a little about sports, but he’d also written about campus culture and free lectures he’d gone to as well. He might have been the sports editor now, but that didn’t limit what he could write about. So long as good writers were willing to write a piece on something,  _ The Reporter _ had always let them. He’d been the one to put himself in a box, not anyone else. 

“What should I do, then?” Victor asked. “It’s my last season. I’m the  _ captain _ . I can’t just take a step back from all of this.” 

“It’s like Yakov said today,” Chris said. 

He finished loading his shirts into the dresser and closed it with a soft ‘thud.’ 

“We have 35 days until the season starts. Work hard for the team, sure, but don’t bring more of it home with you than you have to. Give yourself an hour or two everyday when you’re going to work on team stuff, and then let that be it. Spend the rest of your time reading something you actually want to read, or doing stuff around campus again.” 

Victor rolled back onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. It all seemed so easy when Chris put it like that, but in practice, it felt like it would be impossible. Even when he wasn’t trying to think about hockey, he did. Sometimes ideas for plays, or how to improve training would come to him, and he would spend hours going down the rabbit hole of fleshing a stray thought into reality. 

“I’ll help you do it,” Chris said gently, guessing Victor’s thoughts, just as he always could. “But it can’t just be me, or Georgi, or anyone else telling you to do these things. You have to want to do them too.” 

The problem was, Victor wasn’t sure if he wanted them. He saw Chris’ point, of course he did, but just wasn’t sure if trying make a change now would be worth it, not with the team in the shape it was in. 

Chris collapsed onto the bed next to Victor, shoulder to shoulder, their head touching at their crowns. 

“You take incredibly good care of this team,” Chris said, “and we all love you for that, but you also need to take care of yourself too, and even if you don’t find the love of your life right now, you need to remember how to be in love with life, not hockey, because even though they may seem like it, they’re not the same thing.” 

Victor chuckled a little in an weak attempt to lighten the mood, and deflect away from his own doubts over all of this. 

“When did you get so wise?” He asked Chris. 

“I’m the goalie,” Chris retorted. “It lends me perspective.” 

“‘Saving our hearts, our team, and our goal.’” Victor said, quoting a sign that had popped up on the glass midway through the season last year. 

“Hey, no more hockey,” Chris teased, poking him in the side. “But yes. That’s exactly it. Right here where I need to be to rescue all of y’all when you need me.” 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love writing Chris and Victor's friendship. It brings me joy :)
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy a fiercely determined Yuri! Thanks for reading and commenting!

Everyone else in the hall, non-student athletes, Yuri supposed, moved in the next day. Phichit watched them curiously from the window. Yuri went for a run, a long one. It was as good as, say, doing sprints on the roundabout in front of the motel with Mark. He knew that. Hockey required quick bursts of strength and power. Shifts on the ice were short, even if the game was long. It wasn’t slow and steady endurance he needed, but the endurance to continuously be strong across short bursts. 

He knew all of this, knew it because he’d spent the last sixteen years or so having it drilled into his head, and he didn’t care. He and Cooper and Mark had always taken one long run together every week or two. They did it under the guise of training and called it a “recovery” run, but it wasn’t recovery for their bodies they needed so much as recovery for their minds. They all thought best when they were moving, and they all thought best when they were together. Recovery runs had always been the time and space they needed to think through the roadblocks they could feel ahead of them. It was like gently working out the knots in a tangled piece of string; it took time and effort, but eventually they got everything sorted out together. 

It was the together that was really getting to Yuri as he stepped off of the side streets surrounding campus and plunged into the woods that surrounded the college town on virtually all sides, like a barrier keeping the outside world, and the shenanigans of the students in. In all, lately, Yuri was feeling as isolated from everything and everyone around him as Melrose and Avon was from the outside world. He didn’t have a “together” here, no matter what anyone here tried to tell him. Together couldn’t just be dictated to you. It had to be earned. 

Yakov had at least started to acknowledge that in his pre-practice pep-talk. They still needed to prove themselves to each other, learn to depend on each other. The problem was the dependence required trust, and Yuri had only ever fully trusted two people on the ice, and he’d grown up playing with them his entire life. 

And now they were gone. So the question stood: what was he going to do? 

With a start, Yuri realized the origin of this line of thinking. It stopped him short on the path. Soft sunlight, filtering down through the canopy arching high above him, washed over him, highlighted little patches of violets at the edges of the brush. Comforting silence settled down around him. 

Mark had been the captain of their team for the past few years. He was the center, their idea man, the one who could always pull the team together when it mattered most. It was a decision that had made sense. But when it had been made, their coach had pulled Yuri and Cooper aside and directed the two of them to be Mark’s “impulse control.” Alternate captains, the people who provided the necessary support and subtle leadership on a team that the captain couldn’t always give. It seemed that even here, thousands of miles from everything he thought he knew, and endlessly removed from the plans Yuri had laid for himself this time last year, being that impulse control, shaping things from the background, was a habit he couldn’t shake. 

Another player might have looked at this and despaired. Yuri, completely uprooted and unsure of his footing, the rest of the team, green freshman who still needed to figure out the ropes, and a miniscule set of upperclassmen to show them all the way. 

But Yuri had always had a gift for looking at all the players lined up one the ice and seeing how the patterns would form, where the openings would be, and what the weak spots were. It’s part of what had made the offensive line he and Mark had led so good, no matter who was playing on their left wing. 

This team needed leadership, and a persistent dedication to growing together that would breed trust and loyalty. It might be overstepping his bounds, to call out Victor and tell him what this team needed--likely when Victor himself already knew all of this, but hockey was an impossible sport to play alone. One strong player couldn’t save a team if he couldn’t inspire everyone else to follow him to greatness. 

He had thought, last spring when he’d been trying to figure out what to do next, that if he did ever play hockey again, then from here out he would go it alone, that he would try and be alright without his best friends behind him, without forming the bonds that made defeat so, so much worse. 

Yakov had told him otherwise, or the approximation of it. He didn’t think he was good enough to play with his friends anymore? Fine. Yakov had never been in the market of trying to convince Yuri to do otherwise, not when Mark and Cooper wouldn’t be playing for Avon. But hockey wasn’t an individual sport, and it never had been. The goalie was only as good as the defence, the defence only as good as the center and his string, The forward string could only be as good as the center, and the center would be nothing without his wings. It was a little mantra. An old one, another thing that Yuri had been hearing all his life that he’d been surprised to hear Yakov recite to him. 

“This team doesn’t  _ want _ you, Yuri,” Yakov had told him last spring, once he had caught Yuri off-guard. “It  _ needs  _ you.” 

It was a lot to put on a freshman, Yuri had known that even before he’d agreed to play for Yakov. But he had the leadership, the knack for the game, even if nobody had ever expected it from him. He didn’t know if he could play without Mark and Cooper. He didn’t know if this team really had anything left to give. He knew their stats, and the overwhelming amount of freshman made him as nervous as anyone, but it felt like a challenge, to rise above it all. 

And there had always been a part of Yuri that loved ripping apart a challenge on the ice with his skates, his stick, and his string. 

He started running again. The world went on around him. And Yuri started planning ways that he could help bring them all together. 


End file.
